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I had a fantastic visit to Stopsley High School recently where I met the fantastic Head Teacher, Mrs Gill Bryan, and members of staff and teachers including Emma Orr, and a group of students from year 7 who gave me quite a grilling on my political views and motivations!

I was delighted that the school were also able to host a visit by Andrew Mitchell MP, the shadow minister for international development, on the same day  - and he spent some time with year 10 students discussing a variety of topics.

This is a school that is clearly doing the right things and going in the right direction, and it was a delight to see such a high level of engagement and mutual respect between students and teachers as I saw today.  The pupils were articulate, insightful, immacuately turned out and well mannered.   The school also had a very impressive recent  OFSTED report which was a delight to read before I visited the school. Not all schools acros the country can claim these things, and it does not come without effort.

It always amazes me how seriously even very young people, take what is going on around them, and how much they care about their town and their country.  This was immediately obvious from the large number of straight and insightful questions I got from the students:  What would you do for Luton?  What would you do differently?  Why are you interested in politics?  What did your parents think of you going into politics?  Who are my opponents?  Are you nervous about the election?  Why do we call Members OF Parliament MP's and not MOP's (that flummoxed me!) and so on.  And all these questions from year 7 pupils who were just 11 or 12 years old!

I'm not sure whether I gave the answers they were expecting, or wanted to hear, but the sincerity of the questions meant I felt obliged to give straight answers .  If only hustings and political debate with the adult crowd was so frank!